Rating: 
Summary: A big boring read!
Review: "The CEO of the Sofa" is structured into 12 monthly instalments - sort of stream of (un)consciousness essays - from the world according to P J O'Rourke. You may have come across O'Rourke before......he's a one-off, the world's only funny Republican ! And this book is, often if not consistently, very funny. We get his trademark satire and cynicism on a huge range of topics. And if it is true that much humour is about probing for and exploiting frailty, O'Rourke is a comic master. He claims "I just make fun of things". This is an uncharacteristic understatement - he is pathologically unsympathetic, and relentless in his pursuit of what he perceives to be weakness or pretence. And that includes a lot. As he confesses, "everything is bugging me, I'm at that stage of life" and, he should add, apparently rather enjoying it too ! India, religion, talentless 15-minute-of-famers, wine-tasting, for example, all come under his scornful gaze. Neither is he averse to turning the sights on himself. Indeed, he is unapologetically lazy, witness a driving lesson for his godson in the depth of winter, which consists merely of a catalogue of excuses to stay in - that's the real key to good bad-weather driving ! But it's when he enters the realm of politics that O'Rourke starts to really let rip. Often, this is through his alter ego, The Political Nut, who, coincidentally, calls round the moment Democrats (or alcohol) appear on the scene. Although he is "a Cro-Magnon republican of long standing", in truth his party is that of the extreme libertarians. He is against intereference in any shape or form, reserving his most savage blows for the UN and Democrats - Hillary Clinton, especially, would clearly get a `warm welcome' at the O'Rourke household. He abhors also both the bleeding hearts and those people who put themselves in positions where hearts bleed for them. How selfish these people are, being so feeble as to cause the government to levy taxes from the likes of him to support their weakness ! Some of his most hilarious moments are reserved for what he would consider to be forced correctness in any form. Ever heard of the Task Force of Bias-Free Language for the Association of American University Presses ? Imagine how they get both barrels ! In the end, he refuses to be tied down by any recognised -isms which impinge on his freedom. In fact, he doesn't believe in the political world at all - I guess Republicanism is just the closest he can find to a non-political party. "The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take 100 of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm". He does have some basic tenets - "there is no human liberty without property rights...and...you own you, your efforts, what you do" - but, beyond that, everything is fuel for his indignation. Despite having little sympathy with his espoused values, I still found the book an extremely entertaining and provocative commentary of the early 21st century (US-centric) world. Despite the constant onslaught, there is a strong sense of tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecation which makes O'Rourke very appealing rather than very arrogant. For example, despite all the bluster, he is completely in awe of his wife and small children, accepting that they are the ones who really get things done - he's just the guy watching TV and scribbling notes in the corner. All in all, highly recommended. Incidentally, the 12 month period covered by "The CEO of the Sofa" runs to August 2001 - I wonder what chapter 13 might have looked like ? Now read "Stupid White Men" for the alternative worldview......
Rating: 
Summary: Not one of his better efforts....
Review: After all the brilliant books to come from the pen (word processor?) of O'Rourke, this comes as a bit of a disappointment. It is a disjointed effort - while it contains a lot of O'Rourke's usual wit, there isn't the cohesive theme you find in many of his other books. He rambles around, recording conversations with his assistant or teenage nephew for much of the book. There is his biting lampooning of the bad and not-so-great, and many salient points are made; but very often the humour feels contrived. Perhaps this is a book that needed just a little more spit and polish.
Rating:
Summary: A big boring read!
Review: An friend recommended I read anything by P.J. O'Rourke, so I purchased CEO of the Sofa, since it sounded like a fun title. Boy was I wrong! This guy O'Rourke is just plain boring, whiny, and unfunny! Save your money and rent Caddy Shack instead.
Rating:
Summary: Suffers from an artificiality uncharacteristic of O'Rourke
Review: At his best, P.J. O'Rourke is rib-splitting hilarious at the expense of that mishmash of bad thinking that passes for modern liberalism. Unfortunately, O'Rourke is not at his best in _CEO of the Sofa_, which I attribute to the artificiality of trying to mimic the urbane 19th-century style of humorous writing found in _Autocrat of the Breakfast-table_. While this kind of thing can be funny for a few pages, it is next to impossible to maintain successfully to book length.
If you are unfamiliar with O'Rourke, I would suggest starting with either _Parliament of Whores_ or _Eat the Rich_ rather than _CEO of the Sofa_. If you are already an O'Rourke fan, then you will want to read _CEO of the Sofa_ mostly for completeness.
Rating:
Summary: It should have worked
Review: But it didn't. The conceit just did not cohere. The passion, the clarity, the wit were all on the back burner. Even the great P. J., everyone's favorite right-wing fascist (i.e. non-Democrat), has his off days and this was one of them. All is not lost, however. I recently finished a long piece of his about Egypt which was in top form so I am confident in his next book he will be back in his game. But until then . . . oh, well.
Rating:
Summary: OK for O'Rourke fans, not for novices.
Review: CEO of the Sofa is an uneven book. It's basically a collection of some of P.J.'s writings on everything from Hillary Clinton to driving to being a new father. It is linked together in an homage to Holmes' "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" as a series of diatribes P.J. unleashes on the Democrats next door, his assistant, his wife, his daughter, his godson and the baby sitter (usually as his alter ego, the Political Nut). I can't, in good faith, recommend this book to non-P.J. fans. The wit is there but the book lacks the coherence, factual analysis and dogged persistence on a subject that characterize his best books - Eat the Rich, Parliament of Whores and All the Trouble in the World. Even his previous collections - Vacations in Hell, Give War a Chance and Age and Guile - had related articles sandwiched together in sections. This just sounds like someone rambling on and on from topic to topic with no rhyme or reason. If you're not familiar with O'Rouke, I recommend the above-mentioned books, which are excellent. Some of the stuff in the book is very good. Some of it isn't. His open letter to Democrats, his discussion of how being a parent changed his outlook, his (well-deserved) lambasting of Hillary and his analysis of the impeachement scandal in which no side is spared his sharp tongue, are top notch. But the CEO linkages annoyed me. Moreover, he took his old articles and pasted in asides to his (fictional) audience. The pasting is obvious and the asides are unnecessary and distracting. If he'd just done this as a coherent collection of his writings, it would probably be a 3.5-4 star book. As it is, it's 3-3.5 stars for PJ fans, probably less for novices.
Rating:
Summary: Stick to the plot PJ
Review: I am a big PJ O'Rourke fan, but he is at his best when writing about the idiocies of political systems and economies around the world. He is not at his best making us chuckle over his domestic arrangements. Still, this has plenty of good stuff. I found his comparisoms of Venice and the Venetian Hotel funny and surprisingly informative. Not his best, but add to the collection.
Rating: 
Summary: O'Rourke Gets Better With Age
Review: I resisted this title for months, thinking I'd have no interest in a parenting tome, but don't repeat my mistake by judging this book by its cover! I've been a PJ fan since his NatLamp days in the 70s. Even when my politics were much different from his, I've always appreciated his brilliant wit. This book is actually a collection of some of PJs recent magazine articles (none of which I had previously seen) and some unpublished bits, glued together with a faux-family-and-hired-help-narrative thread, which actually works quite well. Here we get hilarious advice on how to choose vehicles for minimum winter utility, wry glimpses of the bureaucratic chaos at the UN, raw bludgeoning of Bill Clinton, and a surprising amount of digs at PJ's own conservative compatriots. PJ, maybe the top satirist of our age, draws much humor from his own love of drink, and it continues to amaze and amuse, as in his Blind [Drunk] Wine Tasting chapter. As with most of PJ's work, there's a gut-buster on nearly every page. Leave your prejudices behind, and embrace his for a few hours, and your sides will ache, guaranteed!
Rating: 
Summary: O'Rourke mocks at - just about everything
Review: In this book O'Rourke is his usual savagely funny self as he gives his views on politics, welfare, medicare, republicans, democrats, the Clintons, Monica Lewinsky and life in general. He is particulalry funny when demolishing Hillary Clinton's book 'It Takes a Village' and another bizarre book, apparently a handbook of politically correct language (this book sounded so totally weird, I wasn't sure that he didn't invent it as a joke). His piece about India is particlarly good, nobody else writes about foreign parts as well as O'Rourke. Occasionaly I found myself getting irritated, as when he gets all Michael Moore-ish about women, going on about how intelligent, efficient, competent, and generally more adult and better than men they are. I hate this. Not being at all efficient, competent and adult myself, I find myself deeply loathing Mrs O'Rourke and all thoise other smartallick women who are so different from me. He's at it again later in the book when he's on about women being wonderful with children etc. Crikey, all these female paragons he seems to know make me tired. And it startles me a bit to find that he doesn't believe that Elian's father had any right to have his son returned to him, as a father himself I would have expected him to be more sympathetic to father's rights. However, in general this is a very funny book (his comparisons between Venice, Italy, and Venice, Las Vegas, had me in stitches, likewise his experiments with wine-tasting).His most profound comment in the book is "the difference between having one child and having two, is like the difference between keeping a dog and running a zoo" That is SO true. And his wife is probably not as tiresome in real life as she seems to be in this book. Very funny.
Rating:
Summary: O'Rourke mocks at - just about everything
Review: In this book O'Rourke is his usual savagely funny self as he gives his views on politics, welfare, medicare, republicans, democrats, the Clintons, Monica Lewinsky and life in general. He is particulalry funny when demolishing Hillary Clinton's book 'It Takes a Village' and another bizarre book, apparently a handbook of politically correct language (this book sounded so totally weird, I wasn't sure that he didn't invent it as a joke). His piece about India is particlarly good, nobody else writes about foreign parts as well as O'Rourke. Occasionaly I found myself getting irritated, as when he gets all Michael Moore-ish about women, going on about how intelligent, efficient, competent, and generally more adult and better than men they are. I hate this. Not being at all efficient, competent and adult myself, I find myself deeply loathing Mrs O'Rourke and all thoise other smartallick women who are so different from me. He's at it again later in the book when he's on about women being wonderful with children etc. Crikey, all these female paragons he seems to know make me tired. And it startles me a bit to find that he doesn't believe that Elian's father had any right to have his son returned to him, as a father himself I would have expected him to be more sympathetic to father's rights. However, in general this is a very funny book (his comparisons between Venice, Italy, and Venice, Las Vegas, had me in stitches, likewise his experiments with wine-tasting).His most profound comment in the book is "the difference between having one child and having two, is like the difference between keeping a dog and running a zoo" That is SO true. And his wife is probably not as tiresome in real life as she seems to be in this book. Very funny.
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